


Glass Heart In A Nesting Doll

by nuclearchinchilla



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 12:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13998414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuclearchinchilla/pseuds/nuclearchinchilla
Summary: 29 is the number they start with. On a bleak Tuesday morning, Yuuri walks into medical and exchanges a bullet in the shoulder for the outermost layer of a matryoshka doll.





	Glass Heart In A Nesting Doll

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece which is also a contribution to the R-18 Heartbeats zine. 
> 
> Download it here:  
> https://heartbeatszine.itch.io
> 
> Comments are welcome.

29 is the number they start with. On a bleak Tuesday morning, Yuuri walks into medical and exchanges a bullet in the shoulder for the outermost layer of a matryoshka doll. The shell is fairly large, a little over 12 inches. It is painted intricately, in the steady, precise strokes of a sniper’s hand. Yuuri figures another 28 or so dolls can fit inside it.

 

In other words, Viktor Nikiforov, world-renowned ex-sniper, has a pretty positive outlook on Yuuri’s life expectancy as an intelligence agent.

 

Gradually, a thought lodges itself in Yuuri’s throat. There are other nesting dolls that Viktor makes him. After all, he doesn’t actually get injured that often even in his dangerous line of work, and this one is the Medical Matryoshka, the one where he gets each layer for going promptly and willingly to medical. But how long would it take to complete 28 more trips to medical, to complete 28 more dolls?

 

28, 27, 26. Sometimes, the doll is handed quietly to him by a nurse. Sometimes it’s sitting on the dresser when he wakes up. He lines them neatly in a transparent cabinet controlled for heat and temperature. 28 is the broken leg, 27 is internal bleeding, 26 is his bad back.

 

_28 is the one that came to his mind when the junior agent Yurio had tried to get off his wheelchair, snapping “I’m not weak, let me get up, I can walk on this.” He had wanted to snap at Yurio because for god’s sake, did he know how much more money and time it would cost if he fucked himself up further? But then Yuuri doesn’t say it, because in a moment, the scent of the hospital threw him off, and he remembered 28 and 26 and all the many times before the Medical Matryoshka, when he had broken something or been shot or poisoned or nearly drowned. He remembered the dismissals, the sneers, the condescension, because really, you have to be fine, you’re such a drama queen, why do you still need to be in the hospital? He had hopped around with a broken leg for the whole day before, insisting that he was fine even though he clearly wasn’t and anyone could see that. But all he got to hear then were others sounding almost proud that he was insisting. Because that’s what good, tough agents do, isn’t it? Good, tough agents are heroes, and heroes are bullheaded and stupid and prideful and hate any kind of emotional or medical treatment. When he finally got to the hospital, he had needlessly aggravated his injury, his back was acting up again and even his good leg was screaming in pain. Then the nurse wheeled out the wheelchair and all he could hear were the jeers drowning him, laughing oh god are you really going to use that? Wow you’re such a fucking princess- Yuuri remembered all of it. He remembered why he needed the Medical Matryoshka to begin with._

 

_“You’re not weak,” he told Yurio firmly, “you’re clever.”_

 

_“I don’t need this. I didn’t even need to come here, I was fine.”_

 

_“You had a medical problem and you went to get it solved. If you waited, it would get worse and there’d be two zeros at the end of the hospital bill. The budget team should be thanking you. Stupidity isn’t strength, its a true weakness, so don’t act stupid because others can’t tell what strength is and isn’t.”_

 

_Yurio was silent for a while._

 

_“Then what is strength? I want to show them I’m strong,” he said, with the desperate naivety of the young and upcoming, so raw and genuine that it broke Yuuri’s heart, that it reminded him of being seven, skating on the ice and thinking the worst thing in sports was placing fourth, except that it’s not, except that the worst thing in sports is crashing out on an injury so hard that you can never get back, and no one believes you when your back makes your teeth grit on rainy days._

 

_What is strength, how do you show it? Yuuri couldn’t answer him. He never felt that strong himself. Cleverness was certainly a strength he had seen Yurio display in action, but it felt too depressing to tell him that maybe it could never prove a point to others too brash to see it._

 

_26 is the one that would always remind him of the back of the cab. Not because his back had acted up then. Sitting in the back of the cab that night, his back was as cooperative as the weather, but it was late out and he was struck with a whim._

 

_“I used to skate,” he texted Viktor. What a way to put it. Four medals in international competitions, and he had used those four words to put it. He felt panic rise in his throat. Personal information, interests, weaknesses- they were exploitable as emotional ammunition. They were emotional vulnerabilities, meaning that if someone can’t physically hurt you, they have ammo anyway to twist your words and mock what you love and tear down what you stand for. Yuuri knew all about that. He was anxious and emotionally open and sensitive and honest, until he wasn’t, until he realized what a bad idea it was to really have a glass heart. But he kept that persona around anyway because it made other people let down their guard, made them think the cold and driven Agent Katsuki didn’t really exist._

 

_“Ice skating?” Viktor texted back._

 

_That question was followed by a string of heart-faces and snowflakes and cheery emojis. Viktor’s bitmoji peeked out (Yuuri had recently caught on to what a bitmoji was). He was struck with the realization that the mute Viktor used to be a cheerful, talkative, exuberant man, before The Incident had taken away his voice, and left him only able to act out a shadow of that old self over a blue screen miles away._

 

_“Yes. I was a figure skater.”_

 

_“Were you any good at it?”_

 

_“I don’t know.”_

 

He sees Viktor face-to-face less than he sees the dolls. He sees Viktor face-to-face less than he sees the sheer time and effort put into every little detail painstakingly carved and painted into the wood of the dolls. The designs become so elaborate, they feel like a declaration.

 

Of what, Yuuri has yet to find out.

 

24 is the repeated one.

_Yuuri supposes at some point, one of the dolls might break after all. Viktor is trying a different medium, so he made the last two in porcelain. There might be an attack at a location presumed safe, Yuuri thought, at a location where the doll might be dropped off, only for it to be blasted to pieces. But he never expected it to happen like this. He never expected it to happen while he was walking home, perfectly safe. Never expected for it to be a firecracker which sets it all off, sends him crashing, heads over hands, onto the pavement, trembling, the doll falling out of his tote bag and smashing to pieces all over the asphalt. The passers-by step over him and say nothing. He waits for his heart to stop hammering in his chest, waits for his legs to stop shaking, waits for the visions of bright lights burning into his corneas to fade. He heaves on a empty stomach, as if he can still feel the searing hot pain of a humiliating violation firing off every nerve too deep inside him, as if he’s still there feeling each stab of pain sending off klaxon alarms as his throat stripped raw from screams and his limbs had struggle not so much because of the pain but the utter loss of power, although the pain itself is already too damn much. He waits for the phantom of the memory of knife-peeled strips of skin slimy and thin slithering down his throat, to stop marching and branding their way across his mind. Then he gets up and stares for a long time at the shards lain around him like they’re pieces of his heart laid bare and shattered on the sidewalk. The red of the girl’s dress on the doll still shines like fresh blood spurting out the carotid when he-_

 

_“I’ll make another one,” Viktor texts back, “I’ll make another 24.” The bluish glow of Yuuri’s phone shines onto his chest in the dark room, as he cradled it near to his body. The pieces of the shattered doll sit on his ledge, the broken face looking mutely towards the moonlight._

 

23 is when he finally voices the thought to Viktor.

 

_“I got a papercut,” he texted, “maybe I should get a doll for that.”_

 

_Viktor sends over a laughing emoji. Yuuri vaguely wondered how his real laugh must have sounded like before The Incident, if it was as loud as his mannerisms, or as beautiful as the smile he has even now._

 

_“I’m serious. It’ll take quite a long time if we stick to the current rules. I go to medical an average of once every 7 months. By those calculations, it would take you 16 years from start to finish of the doll.”_

 

_“16 years?”_

 

_Yeah who wants to be stuck with me for 16 years, is what Yuuri almost texts, but he doesn’t. He just texts “Yes.”_

 

_“Then you need to take care of yourself better. I’m hoping for more than 16 years.”_

 

22 is when Viktor tells him what happens at 0.

 

_They had found the footage. It’s in a fucking basement with B-movies from three decades ago. Yuuri’s breath comes to him in fits and starts. He can still hear the sickening crunch of knuckles grounded under heel, and limbs bent too far back, pounding their way across his ears._

 

 _“They never planned to let you live,” he signed to Viktor. The Russian man’s eyes widen at his apparent knowledge of ASL._   


_“But I’m here,” Viktor signed back, somehow managing to do so reassuringly, “I lived.”_

 

_“Did you know?”_

 

_“Yes. They wouldn’t let the recording go live. And I had seen too much.”_

 

_So that was the plan. Release the footage later, demand their payment, and then reveal their agent was dead after all. Except that it was a terrible plan to begin with, Viktor escaped, the group’s hideout was burnt to the ground, and now these lost recordings of five fucking hours of torture turned themselves up in an abandoned safehouse. Yuuri never got the clearance to know about The Incident much, and he had never asked._

 

_He feels something wet slither down his cheeks. He feels like screaming that goddamnit why can’t paramilitary factions build their own safehouses with functioning basements, is it so really so hard to avoid ceiling leaks? But then he tastes the salt of the water that pauses on the bow of his upper lip, and it’s his tears after all._

 

_He still has a damn glass heart after all. He had convinced him that he had been rid of it amongst his many personas, along the hallway of his masks. But as much as he was able to play each role as well as the next, as much as he was able to get under someone’s skin and understand them and absorb their personality until it felt like his own, he wasn’t in full control after all. He had an uncertain and modest persona, but also a seductive and alluring persona, and also a cold and strict persona, and so many many more, all boxed up and labelled, layers and layers like a matryoshka doll, but a big heart still nestled inside, unbreakable. He was still standing there, crying, as capable of sentimentality as practicality, of anxiety as well as confidence, of humanity as well as inhumanity._

 

_“How is your hand?” Viktor signed._

 

_“It’s a shallow wound.”_

 

_“You’re bleeding over your bandages. Go get it checked and you’ll get 22.”_

 

_“Sure.” Yuuri even managed a smile, even though it was probably more of a grimace, “What happens when we reach zero?”_

 

_“I had plans for that. But you’re right. 16 years is too long.”_

 

_Then he stops signing and gives Yuuri a sign he can’t struggle to understand. Yuuri feels the press of Viktor’s lips against his and leans into it._


End file.
